It's difficult to rate Arena because, well, are you reviewing Magic the Gathering, the card game that's been going on for nearly 30 years, or Arena's specific technical implementation of it, or the Standard meta that the game exists in?
Briefly: MTG is great. If you've played it you probably know how you feel about it. If you've only played Hearthstone or other digital CCGs, I can't recommend it enough. The depth, variety and reinvention in MTG far outstrip any other CCG I've played.
As for Arena's implementation, it gets so much so right. Before I played it I thought the game would be unbearable with endless back-and-forths for priority, but the implementation is smooth. Maybe a little complex- the subtleties of holding 'full control' take a while to grasp, and even hundreds of hours in I've made mistakes. But from launch you've been able to play games at a blistering pace, and I personally enjoy not having to manually shuffle my deck or maintain a collection of thousands of tiny pieces of cardboard.
... but Arena is not without issues. Since launch, innovations have been paltry. Much requested features like spectator mode, true pod drafting, FFA, Commander, or custom formats remain unsupported, while features nobody asked for like Arena exclusive cards or even more cosmetics continue to be rolled out. "Historic", the game's unique eternal format, has been a mess since the jump and the developers are apparently reluctant to support Pioneer or Modern. Despite the game making money hand over fist for WotC, they seem reluctant to invest in expanding its features. Only after the game being out for 2 years, and the format of all professional play during the pandemic, did WotC figure out a way to execute true pod drafting for a single tournament.
The card crafting and monetization model also leaves something to be desired- a long term player will typically be left with hundreds of uncommon wildcards, dozens of mythics, and no rares. Fun decks are ruinously expensive to assemble - trash rares that sell for pennies IRL will eat up the same wildcards that craft into dual lands and meta staples. There's also some wonky stuff going on with the competitive ladder if you look deep enough into it, but it's a little beyond me.
I continue to play the odd game every other day, a good way to kill 10 or 20 minutes at a time, and will likely continue to do so for some time to come. With no major new features on the horizon though my enjoyment of the game will be wholly dictated by what's released into Standard. How much I enjoy that particular turbulent meta is sort of out of Arena's hands.
Briefly: MTG is great. If you've played it you probably know how you feel about it. If you've only played Hearthstone or other digital CCGs, I can't recommend it enough. The depth, variety and reinvention in MTG far outstrip any other CCG I've played.
As for Arena's implementation, it gets so much so right. Before I played it I thought the game would be unbearable with endless back-and-forths for priority, but the implementation is smooth. Maybe a little complex- the subtleties of holding 'full control' take a while to grasp, and even hundreds of hours in I've made mistakes. But from launch you've been able to play games at a blistering pace, and I personally enjoy not having to manually shuffle my deck or maintain a collection of thousands of tiny pieces of cardboard.
... but Arena is not without issues. Since launch, innovations have been paltry. Much requested features like spectator mode, true pod drafting, FFA, Commander, or custom formats remain unsupported, while features nobody asked for like Arena exclusive cards or even more cosmetics continue to be rolled out. "Historic", the game's unique eternal format, has been a mess since the jump and the developers are apparently reluctant to support Pioneer or Modern. Despite the game making money hand over fist for WotC, they seem reluctant to invest in expanding its features. Only after the game being out for 2 years, and the format of all professional play during the pandemic, did WotC figure out a way to execute true pod drafting for a single tournament.
The card crafting and monetization model also leaves something to be desired- a long term player will typically be left with hundreds of uncommon wildcards, dozens of mythics, and no rares. Fun decks are ruinously expensive to assemble - trash rares that sell for pennies IRL will eat up the same wildcards that craft into dual lands and meta staples. There's also some wonky stuff going on with the competitive ladder if you look deep enough into it, but it's a little beyond me.
I continue to play the odd game every other day, a good way to kill 10 or 20 minutes at a time, and will likely continue to do so for some time to come. With no major new features on the horizon though my enjoyment of the game will be wholly dictated by what's released into Standard. How much I enjoy that particular turbulent meta is sort of out of Arena's hands.
4 Comments
I'm curious, what's kept you playing (presumably since launch)? Have you liked the new sets in Standard? Do you play Historic at all?
@Dief88 I'm not sure that it's possible to reply-to-a-reply on backlogged, but in answer to your question, I play because I generally enjoy MTG, I like watching tournament play and I almost always see a deck that makes me go "Ooh, I want to play THAT", whether it's Jund Sacrifice, Gruul Adventures, Monored Aggro, Bard Class, Izzet Dragons etc. The decks feel different, new and exciting to me and I love seeing the pieces come together. I generally don't play Historic because it seemed like quite a big investment to keep up with the other sets and pieces that were released into it.
I love MTG as a game, and there's no doubt in my mind that Arena is the best way to play it there's ever been. I even enjoy playing a lot of the archetypes you mentioned! The thrill of MTG for me is the way cards interact; theoretically, its possibilities are almost infinite. I guess the last few sets I played just felt very narrow to me, with so many matches playing out exactly the same way, and that happened enough sets in a row that I guess I lost the confidence in WotC to say "maybe my new favorite set is just around the corner." I would likely still try Arena again if I heard something really promising about the sets currently in Standard.
Dief88
2 years ago
But the final straw for me was the first set rotation, when they dumped most of my favorite cards in the game into the crappy "Historic" mode where those were the only sets you could play. I'm sure "Historic" has gotten more robust in some ways since other sets eventually got rotated into it, but once they announced "Historic"-exclusive cards I was out. It didn't help that the new set in Standard at the time was the fairy tale-themed one, which also didn't do much for me.